Watch a blog for updates on performance of SL??????

Thank you, Chronic. I have no idea what the in-world message said. I was just talking about what is available on the website.

To be more clear, what I meant is this. This is what I found doing it again just now:

1. Front page. Go to “Grid Status” at the bottom of the page. Click on it. It says :

“Second Life Grid Status

Second Life is Open

The Second Life grid and the Second Life web site are open.

For additional information and notices about system upgrades, maintenance, outages, or other known problems please read Second Life Announcements. “

---------------

2. Go to “Second Life Announcements.” It says:

Numerous regions down


Please see:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/08/...ed-for-updates/

for the latest updates.
__________________

3. Go to the blog. It says:

7:55 PM PDT: Good news! Grid returning back to normal

Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 by Torley Linden
Tags : announcements, grid status

Inworld, I just broadcast:

Hi everyone, we’re aware of a grid-wide issue that has downed numerous regions. We’re endeavoring to get them all back up ASAP–it may take awhile but please remain calm and know we’re on it. Please watch http://blog.secondlife.com for further updates. Thank you.

[UPDATE - 6:55 PM PDT] This just in:

At approx. 6:30pm we began experiencing network failure. Part of our network has gone offline, which also means that a portion of the grid is now offline. You should still be able to login, but several regions will be inaccessible. We hope to have this resolved within the next 2 hours and thank you for your patience and we will be sure to post an update when we have more information.

[UPDATE - 7:30 PM PDT] Continuing… Jeska just broadcasted this inworld:

Jeska Linden: Hello everyone - we’re aware of and working on the grid trouble. Please watch the Linden Blog: http://blog.secondlife.com for the up to date information. Thank you for your patience.

[UPDATE - 7:40 PM PDT] And now:

Update: We are currently in the process of bringing up the regions which were affected by the earlier network failure. All of the regions should be back up within the next hour. Thank you again for your patience.

[UPDATE - 7:55 PM PDT] Good news!

We apologize for the earlier inconvenience. Things are stabilizing and the grid has almost returned to normal. Just about all the regions that were down before are up again! We’ll continue to monitor the grid.

Second Life | Grid Status page “

_____________

Which is where we came in.

coco

Firefox can do a stripped down version natively too, with its live bookmarks. I don't even have a third-party RSS reader installed.

For any Firefox users who are interested in this:

1. Visit http://blog.secondlife.com
2. Click the orange RSS logo that will appear to the right of the URL in the address bar
3. Click OK

You now have a live bookmark that will update itself with any new entries, no matter which page you are on.

Until this point, Suezanne, I never had any need to know or have this thing. Which is why I never made a "choice" about it one way or the other.

The fact that there is now apparently some need just underscores my point that it is now unnecessarily complex.

coco

Yeah, I am sure that link is simply a loose end that they overlooked. I posted a comment suggesting it point to the blog instead.

See my post above, you can do it in three clicks and about 5 seconds.

I tried clicking the orange RSS, but it took me to a page that stated there was no style information available and below that a lot of html coding.

??

Did you click on the orange symbol in your address bar as opposed to the one on the page?

You don't need to use an RSS reader, that is an option. If you do choose to use one, it is very simple. It is actually less effort to install an RSS reader than it is to write a sentence or two explaining that it is too complex.

Just bookmark blog.secondlife.com . That is not complex.

Also you could bookmark http://blog.secondlife.com/category/grid-status .

This is a funny thread. It ilustrates human nature (to generalize the own feelings and experiences) so very, very well.

The vast majority of the people in my surrounding, even the regular PC users, have little or no experience at all with "forums". When I came to SL myself, I maybe had spend a little time in four or five forums; being a PC user since 1984. When I came into SL it took me some time to get to know the system and find out, how to find information where.

The vast majority of SL residents never uses the forums. No matter if you look at the absolute number of users online in the forums or the registered users there really, really a little minority of forum goers among residents.

So this makes the forums is the natural and most obvious channel to inform residents about important events?

I realize that the updates were added to ONE blog posting, but blogs should have the most recent information on top (unlike forums) ... at least this is what I'm used to and it was confusing at first when I went to the blog page and expected the most recent grid status to be on top.

Exactly Pham. I don't understand the dislike for the blog. It is not like they are also telling stories about their dog fluffly there. It is all about SL and LL.
In the 90's we would have called a page like this a News page.

The most recent item actually is at the top of the Linden blog. This might not be the most recent status of the grid. But ...

... when the most recent item is not a grid status, the grid probably does not have any problems (anymore).

Within Torley's announcement, the individual sub-announcements of the status were oldest on top, newest on the bottom.

Whenever there is a grid outage, this is what I do:

1. Check the Grid Status link www.secondlife.com/status

Purpose: it's the basic grid status.

2. I check the Announcements forum straight off that page (there's a link).

Purpose: I get the details.

#2 now will be replaced by the blog. ... no big deal, it's just a change in where I will get redirected.

Only after that do I look around at what other people are saying hoping to get more information. Sometimes I get a little additional detail, but, really, 99% of the posts by the residents are nothing more than screaming and noise. It's hard to locate that one resident post that has sober, thorough, and objective data about the situation from the resident's side.

We don't need the forums for grid updates. Not at all.

If you've been thoroughly dependent on the forums (apart from the Linden posts) for grid data you've been doing yourself a big disservice.

It's just like those who update their clients using the clients and keep screaming that the same version keeps loading. If you instead checked the download page you'll know the moment the new client is available and you won't be wasting 25Mb of download repeatedly.

Well, I'm not going to argue with you about it.

But I will argue this! Of COURSE I've been thoroughly dependent on the forums for grid data, being as how, as you just mentioned, the Linden posts about it have been here.

However, as I've tried to explain above, the Linden comments just don't cut it sometimes. It really does help to talk to other people, particularly if the problem isn't recognized by the Lindens yet as widespread.

But hey - if you think we don't REALLY need to talk to each other, then you are at least in agreement with LL.

coco

... or make it easier on everyone, dump the stupid blog, leave the forums intact, and go straight to the "announcements" forum as we always have done.

Whenever there's an issue, announcements is my first port of call before hitting Live Help if it's not reported already. Think of 100 people doing that when there's a problem, and Live Help fails under the strain. What next.... telephone and leave a message?

Despite working for 'the competition' as far as forums go, I think destroying the forums is one of Linden Lab's worst pieces of action in the time I've been here.

We may no longer be welcome here... but there's always a welcome at http://sl.stratics.com.

Lewis

Ooops! No way to do a proper announcement blog.

Maybe we should educate Torley about blogging a bit? (She is an experienced blogger for quite a while, though.)

Bah, i dont like the blogs at all, quess when the forum poofs, i will learn inworld what the hell is going on, when there are grid issues, or when we have a update, or whatever...

I seriously do not think they find out about grid problems from the forums. There are enough people signaling in-world, they also are in-world. The lag between incidents occurring and Linden announcements happening can be attributed to investigation time. Remember that when the Lindens post, it doesn't mean someone told them about it, it means they've already investigated and confirmed it.

In reply to one of my Answers posts regarding the Critsiano case, Torley said that they're already making changes that will shorten the lag time between incident breakout, resident report, and the Linden announcement.

I don't like the forums closing, but grid status notification is not at any of my reasons. As I said earlier, so what if the announcement moves to the blog, they will just change the link on the status page to aim at the blog (the link currently points to the forum).

The reason I am now accepting of the forums closing is because of the way we conduct ourselves. Take a look at the time the blog comments were not appearing, look at all the negative speculation ... and look at how the thread became totally wasted time simply because the real cause which nobody guessed right turned out to be a back-end problem where the Lindens couldn't even reach the moderation controls.

We've shown ourselves to be impatient and too speculative. Over half of the hot-headed posts I've seen don't even bother to consider all the known facts. Over 75% of suggestions don't bother to consider the effects on other residents.

What kind of forum did we make?

blogs suck

Something I just remembered. All the MMOGs I've been to (heck and even a lot of non-mmogs) report all their major announcements like promotions, policy changes, new features, and grid status on their homepage in a large space usually in the middle of the page and a bit down from the main graphics.

The news update section of the home page takes on the format of a vertical string of individual articles with the newest one on top and older articles below.

Guess what structure that is? .... yes, it's a blog.

All LL needs to do (and it's likely they will) is to modify their blog structure to make the different classifications of data easier to access. They initially had separate blogs, now they have a consolidated blog, they can create a focused spinoff blog fed by the consolidated blog.

At the very least, they can make the news update blog show up on the homepage just like how everyone else does it.

From what i can see the dislike stems from belief generic sections of forums are being shut down to *make* people read the blog.

If you yank years old chair from under someone to make them use new one it doesn't matter if this new one is better, worse or the same. They'll still hate it simply because of your guts to *force* such change on them.

(the lack of obvious, *visible* structure to the blog that creates impression of 'everything and hence nothing available all at once' doesn't help in making it likeable, either)

Yes. Now how many of these MMOG's and non-mmogs you have played don't offer their users a regular forum, at the same time?

Please read my other posts on the issue. I don't like the forum going. I value selected forum threads for discussing solutions we can toss to LL. Accepting that it has to go is not the same as liking that it's going.

This is a thread focused on the issue of performance update announcements, which I feel do not need a forum at all.

Please do not generalize that just because I say we don't need a forum for grid updates that I'm also saying we don't need the forum.